Connections
by Kurrent
Summary: When Bane is hired to forcibly shut down one of Poison Ivy's greenhouses, he bites off a bit more than he can chew. A quick one-shot that includes both Harley Quinn/Poison Ivy as well as a second pairing (also F/F) that I just HAD to write. Nothing too in-depth, just an idea for a pairing which I had never seen written before. Hope you enjoy it! [Harley/Ivy], [Raven/Mary Marvel]


**Author's Note:** I really debated whether this was even worth posting, as I wrote it mostly to flesh out an interesting idea that crept up on me. In the end, I decided to share it, in case someone else might enjoy it. I am most certainly working on my regular Elsanna stories, close to posting the first epilogue of "Feel, Don't Conceal," working on a second chapter of "Exclusive!" despite what I said about it being a one-shot, and laying out the structure for my Elsanna fairy tale. This was just a little aside, but it was fun to write.

This story _doesn't_ contain one of my favorite DC pairings, but that particular pairing (Supergirl/Stephanie Brown Batgirl) will hopefully one day get its own story. What this story does have is one of DC's most obvious (and tacitly acknowledged) pairings in Harley Quinn/Poison Ivy and one pairing that I think makes so much sense that I'm still slightly astounded that it hasn't even been floated about as a possibility that I'm aware of. Read on if you want to see just which two heroines that might be. (Hint: it isn't Supergirl, because she's already spoken for in my world, nor is it Power Girl).

 **Connections**

by Jo K.

 _The truth never set me free_

 _So I did it myself_

-Paramore, "Careful"

—O—

Cape Carmine was a warzone.

Historically a bastion of organized crime in Gotham City, a cold war between crime families had erupted over the last two weeks, and now the all-stars of crime in Gotham had come out to play.

The screams of unpowered foot soldiers reverberated from building to building as two-inch-long thorns dug into their flesh, while vines powerful enough to split asphalt and crack concrete slowly crushed their bones, followed swiftly by their internal organs.

"Savages!" spat the viridian-skinned Poison Ivy as she knelt among the broken glass of the small rooftop greenhouse, hidden in the shadow of several taller surrounding buildings. "These little darlings had shown great promise at removing human-made pollutants from their environment, and you've _murdered_ them!" She turned to regard the shrieking survivors, the last few still able to draw enough breath to scream, but before she could speak further, a massive blow to her spine drove her forward, sending her rolling haphazardly to the edge of the rooftop.

"You should never have revealed yourself, creature," grumbled a deep, terrifying voice, every bit as low and menacing as that of the Batman himself. The large mass that was Bane began slowly walking forward, approaching the prone figure of the gasping Poison Ivy as she tossed awkwardly, trying to regain enough motor control to make her legs work properly again. "Had you stayed out of this conflict, my employers would have been willing to let you exist in peace."

A quick tap on his right shoulder made the behemoth stop suddenly, with a nimbleness that seemed incompatible with his size. He spun his head to the right, looking over his shoulder, only to see nothing there.

Then the left side of his skull bloomed with stinging agony.

He didn't stagger so much as shift to his right, trying to roll with the impact just slightly too late. His left ear went from ringing to not hearing at all in just a few seconds, but his right ear still registered the too-familiar deranged laughter coming from his left side.

"And _YOU_ shouldn't have messed with my girlfriend, ya big bully!" shouted a high-pitched, shrill voice, now just in front of him.

"Harley Quinn," growled the strongman, even before he looked up to see the red-and-black garbed rogue standing in front of him. Despite him being over two feet taller and being more than double her mass, she stood in front of him resolutely, hands on her hips, a cartoonishly-oversized sledgehammer leaning against her right leg, glaring at the supervillain. "I should have known you wouldn't be too far from your partner."

"Yer darn tootin'!" the lithe woman snapped back at him, grabbing the sledgehammer and hefting it with ease, her wiry arms significantly stronger than they appeared. In the blink of an eye she lunged at him, the head of the hammer already arcing toward the larger man's face.

Rather than attempt to dodge the attack, Bane simply reached up with his left hand and caught the head of the sledge with a meaty smack, the stinging pain in his palm simply not enough to bother him. However, he knew enough about the capricious fighter to expect much more than an obvious attack, so it was almost as simple for him to lift his left knee and deflect her attempted kick to his groin immediately thereafter.

He lunged for her throat with his left hand, but she twisted down and away with childish ease, rolling backward and to her left... and conveniently away from the _true_ threat.

Without another word or glance at the nimble but under-powered fighter, Bane turned and began to slowly walk back toward Poison Ivy, who had managed to lift her torso off the ground with her arms but was obviously still unable to rise to her feet.

"Ivy!" Harley shouted from behind Bane. "He's comin' for ya! Put some distance between you an' him!"

Ivy lifted her head to look back at the mountainous man now just a few steps away from her, then she rolled off the roof.

That shocking development actually made Bane pause for just a moment. It was long enough for him to feel a shock of pain between his legs, following by a spreading nausea that likely would have brought a lesser man to his knees. But he had trained specifically to ignore the pain of such underhanded tactics, mentally shunting the pain deeper into his brain but allowing himself to grow slightly more irritated.

When he felt the thick wooden shaft of the sledgehammer against the front of his throat, applied as a quite competent choke hold from behind, he instantly tightened the bulging muscles of his throat, resisting the acrobat's attempt to cut off his breathing. He reached over his head; when he felt fabric, he grabbed tightly and yanked abruptly, throwing the light figure of Harley forward and over the edge of the roof.

However, he could swear that he actually saw the clown smile, and he _did_ hear her laugh once as she sailed through the night air, disappearing just over the roof.

He scowled, now aware that it was most likely her intention to have him throw her off the roof, where she could quickly make her way down to street level and assist her lover, who undoubtedly had survived her roll off the roof and subsequent fall somehow, likely due to her radically altered physiology. It was always so easy to get caught up in the pale woman's jokes and banter when fighting her, so easy to forget that such foolishness camouflaged the mind of an experienced criminal psychologist, an expert not just in understanding others but also manipulating them as well.

And Bane did not like being manipulated.

He surged forward, spotting a modest ledge on the side of the building across from him as he ran, about two stories down as he approached the edge of the roof. He planted his feet and jumped, propelling himself across the gap between the buildings as he readied himself to properly disperse his momentum on the building's wall when he landed, so as not to rebound off the ledge and fall the rest of the way to the street sixty or seventy feet below.

He wasn't prepared for the sudden impact against his right hip just as he cleared the top of the fire escape, however.

Despite the mismatch in mass between him and Harley Quinn, the woman, who had quite obviously been waiting for him to make his leap, had driven both heels into his hip at the perfect time, when he was in midair and unable to compensate for the adjustment in his trajectory. As a result, he watched with a detached fascination as the force of the blow steadily pushed him off the planned flight path toward the other building.

As he slammed into the fire escape he had been trying to avoid on the other building, he felt the metal frame yield to the force of his impact with a groaning, bending some but not enough to prevent a sharp blossom of pain from erupting in his left ribs where they struck the wiry metal. He grabbed at the thin railing of the metal structure, but he initially missed it; the rebounding from his impact was slight, but enough to allow him to begin to tumble as gravity asserted its hold over him.

With a grunt of irritation—not of fear, never of fear—Bane made another attempt to grab the railing of the fire escape, now one or two floors below the level of his initial impact. This time his fingers wrapped around the metal railing, tightening securely despite gravity's sickening pull. The screech of bolts tearing loose of brick and concrete was accompanied by more squealing of metal bending, but the structure held, for the most part.

Bane hung there for a second or two, regaining his focus, then he dropped to the next level of the fire escape, grabbing it long enough to arrest his descent again, then once more before he was close enough to the street level to simply plunge the rest of the way, rolling upon impact with the ground to disperse the force of his landing.

Not two seconds after he hit the ground, he felt something flimsy and metallic hit his right shoulder from above. He sneered beneath his mask, no longer even slightly amused at the way this fight had gone. It was time to end this juvenile stance from the clown, time to force her into making a tactical mistake that would allow him to end this skirmish quickly and decisively.

Ignoring the taunts from behind him, allowing them to ring futilely off the brick and mortar and concrete of the alleyway without finding purchase in his mind, he strode quickly and powerfully toward the crumpled figure lying in a heap roughly thirty feet away from him, a jumbled mess of greens both dark and light. Poison Ivy possessed recuperative powers much more than human, a byproduct of her plantlike physiology, and despite her currently helpless appearance, Bane knew that she was most likely far from it. Being gentle would be a potentially lethal mistake, and he _hated_ mistakes.

—O—

As she finally touched down on the scarred concrete of the alleyway, Harley looked up to see Bane, who was now steadily ignoring her taunts, lift his massive right foot over Ivy's still figure, then bring it down swiftly and fiercely.

The snap of her right arm was audible even back to where Harley was, as was the sharp cry of pain, at first. It was muffled by the sickening crunch of Bane's boot coming down again, this time over Ivy's torso, driving much deeper than her ribs should have allowed; the snapping of bones breaking like twigs was enough to instantly turn Harley's stomach.

" _NO!"_ she screamed, rushing forward angrily, furiously, no longer even thinking about picking up anything to use as a weapon. Her fingers and nails would be enough, driven into the softness of his eyes; blinding was _TOO_ _GOOD for the bastard, the heartless monst—_

The impact of his hand, hard as iron, with her trachea arrested all her thoughts, save for numbly registering the tightening grip of his fingers around her throat. She scrabbled at his digits, trying desperately to find some purchase beneath his constricting grip, some way to relieve the pressure being exerted on her throat, but there was none. She kicked out at his neck, landing two solid blows to his throat, but even that felt like kicking a tree trunk, with no appreciable effect upon the brute of a man. When she launched a third kick at his throat, he caught her leg with his free left hand... then, with what appeared to be just a flick of his forearm, coolly snapped her tibia and fibula.

Harley was unable to scream due to his grip, until he suddenly loosened his fingers, letting her cry of anguish, from suffering both physical and emotional, erupt. After a few seconds he just as suddenly tightened his grip again, this time squeezing even harder.

Harley felt her vision start to dim almost immediately; even through the bolt of pain sizzling up and down her broken right leg, she knew that her scream had emptied her lungs of oxygen, and now Bane's unrelenting grip was choking her very quickly into unconsciousness with her unable to take even the barest of breaths.

 _It isn't fair!_ her mind screamed. _Once I'm out, he's going to KILL Ivy, and then, and then—_

Things went black... but not in a metaphorical sense. In a very real, physical sense.

It was as if the shadows themselves came to life, oozing and surging out of the corners and crevices, flowing into an all-consuming darkness between Bane, still holding the fading Harley off the ground, and Ivy's twitching form. Once the blackness swelled into a sphere twice the size of Bane, it seemed to take shape, stretching upward while it narrowed along its sides, into a shape that was dimly familiar to Harley in the last second before unconsciousness finally claimed her.

As the pillar of blackness stretched higher and higher, it suddenly surged forward in less than an eye blink, enveloping Bane and Harley Quinn. A small tendril of inky substance extended itself toward Poison Ivy, touching the ground just in front of her; after a few seconds it withdrew, leaving the still form of Harley prone beside her lover, tossing fitfully as she unconsciously struggled to breathe against a crushed trachea.

The shadow continued to slowly withdraw further, revealing a second woman, but this one was kneeling over Harley's flailing body, a slender arm covered in an inky indigo full length glove extended to where her fingers were just resting on the blonde's forehead.

An equally dark indigo hood covered her head and face, other than her strong chin and blood-red lips visible from beneath the fabric. "Azar..." she whispered to herself as her magic assessed the injuries among the two women. Poison Ivy was definitely injured and incapacitated, but she was in no immediate danger of death. Harley Quinn, however...

"Crushed trachea, causing suffocation, pulmonary hemorrhage, likely from the same, concussion, intracranial swelling, broken tibia and fibula..." she whispered to herself, moving her fingers over the not-entirely-villain's body. She steeled herself, preparing for the inevitable pain that she would have to experience to heal the woman's critical injuries; the way her magic worked, she had to experience the suffering of anyone she healed, and even though it was always fleeting, it was still an experience that drained her emotionally and spiritually.

As her magic began to pulse between her and Harley Quinn, Raven let the terrifying sensation of choking, of drowning on her own blood as her lungs filled with the thick fluid instead of the sweet oxygen her body so desperately needed, break over her like the cold waves of an arctic ocean. She pushed some of her own health, amplified by her magic, dark and demonic in origin but harnessed for the purposes of good, into the troubled blonde's body, repairing ruptured cartilage, shattered bone and clotting blood as it patiently worked its way through the injured woman's form, healing damage where it was found.

Even across a city so filled with suffering, anger and sadness as Gotham, Harley's boiling mixture of fury and terror a few moments ago had screamed out to Raven's empathic senses like an exploding firework in the darkest of nights. Despite her team, the Titans, in the city on other business, Raven had known that she was most needed here, and she was glad indeed that she had arrived as quickly as she did.

A dull pounding in the base of her skull was growing, though, threatening to disrupt her concentration at a time which was critical both for Raven and for Harley Quinn; the blonde's throat was healing and her breathing was beginning to stabilize, but the magic was still in flux. If Bane's ongoing struggle against Raven's soul-self intensified—and there was growing reason for concern, as the man's willpower and spiritual resolve were prodigious—then it could jeopardize both women while their minds were linked.

 _My love_ , Raven called out with a mixture of telepathy and empathy to her partner, the better part of a city away. _I need you, quickly._

A sensation that felt like warmth, sunlight and the smell of wildflowers washed over Raven like a gentle caress. _On my way, and please be careful_ , came the mental reply, and just registering those thoughts made Raven smile despite the tight focus her current efforts required.

Finally she felt the most critical of Harley's injuries heal and stabilize, allowing her the freedom to release her soul-self's hold on Bane. The living shadow melted away, revealing the warrior's seething, heavily breathing figure.

"You should not have interfered," he solemnly spoke, his gravely voice so ironically similar to that of his great nemesis, Batman.

Raven, however, had not only faced down literal gods and demons, she had also faced down Batman himself. Bane's threat display was as intimidating to her as a warm blanket would have been. "And yet I did," Raven spoke calmly as she looked at the intensely muscled mercenary, her voice's own eerie timbre usually just as disconcerting as Bane's growl. "You would have killed this woman, all for the terrible act of defending the one she loves."

"She should not have interfered either," Bane said coldly as he began to walk toward Raven, still kneeling beside Harley. "Her efforts at hindering me deserved an appropriate response."

Raven turned her face away from Bane; she stood just enough to walk slowly over to where Ivy lay on the ground, her own breathing troubled, her pain radiating out of her and brushing against Raven's mystical senses like heat spilling from a bonfire. "I have more important matters to attend to than a hired killer like you," she said flatly as she knelt once more, this time beside Ivy. "This one needs healing as well."

Bane snorted beneath his mask, stopping his slow advance briefly. "'This one,' as you put it, is my target. If you heal her, that will prolong my work of killing her, which means you will then become my enemy."

"Then perhaps you should find a new contract to fulfill," Raven replied, extending her empathic sense to focus on Poison Ivy, feeling her injuries, attuning to her body's unique physiology, providing mystical energy to heal her injuries and stabilize her condition as well.

"My honor demands I complete this contract," Bane said. "But I respect your own dedication and sense of honor, witch." He began to stride toward her again, the dull clumps of his boots striking the ground now audible due to his proximity. "I will not take your life once you are incapacitated."

Raven lifted her head, a sly smile across her lips, but she did not turn her head to look at Bane, now nearly upon her. "Your compassion, such as it may be, is appreciated. And it might just save _your_ life."

The sudden rush of air displacing forcefully sent tingles skittering across the bare skin of Raven's upper arms, shoulders and thighs. She closed her eyes, letting the feelings of warmth, joy and love pouring off the woman she had chosen to spend the remainder of her life with wash over her psyche. The relatively small amount of bitterness that indicated righteous anger mixed in with the positive emotions Raven noted with no small measure of amusement. "Thank you for coming, my love," she said aloud, the sound of a leather boot landing on the dull concrete of the alleyway coming in the middle of her sentence.

"You're most welcome," replied the woman who had just landed, dropping into a crouch as part of her landing but now standing, uncoiling from the ground like a panther immediately before striking its prey.

Bane's gaze dispassionately swept across the woman who had just interposed herself between him and _his_ intended prey. Yellow leather boots, black laces crisscrossing across their fronts, with short cuffs dangling in a audacious manner better suited for golden age comic books than practical combat. Bare legs, the tops of her trimly toned calves flowing into her similarly firm but feminine thighs, visible until roughly a third of the way up her thighs, where the gold-trimmed hem of her flowing white skirt began. A glistening golden rope, slightly thicker than an average finger (but much thinner than Bane's smallest finger), threaded through the skirt's loops, serving as a belt. Immediately above that, more visible skin, prominent hipbones and a bare stomach not pale but not exactly tanned, its smooth expanse punctuated with a glowing lightning bolt charm dangling from a golden chain and equally golden navel piercing. Just above where the young woman's ribs began to hint at definition beneath her skin, a scarlet red crop top stretched across her chest and small but notable breasts, a tapering lightning bolt design poised directly over her sternum; the taut fabric claimed a hint of looseness here, due to the shallow dip between her breasts, but no more than a hint. The neck of her top dipped low enough to reveal the top of her sternum, but no further, and beyond that and her slender neck, Bane finally gazed upon a petite chin, a frown across otherwise lightly pink-glossed lips, and brown eyes fairly smoldering with resolve beneath short-cut light brown bangs, the remainder of her walnut-brown hair pulled back behind her head and tucked into a ponytail.

"Mary Marvel," intoned the towering man, comically looming over the woman standing resolutely in front of him. But for the first time since the battle had begun several stories above where they currently stood, there was a hint of hesitation in his voice.

"You've got one chance to turn around and walk away," the brunette said, her hands on her hips. "Consider your message sent, whomever your employer may be." She continued to stare up at the much larger man, her eyes glaring into the red patches on his mask. "But if you take another step or make a single move in the direction of Raven or either Ivy or Harley, _neither_ of whom is currently in a condition to defend herself, I might add, then I'm going to end this in a way you're not going to like."

Bane simply held his ground, his keen mind rapidly reassessing the current tactical situation. He was only a few strides away from his primary target, Poison Ivy, and judging from how intently Raven was focused, her healing magicks for the plant-woman were not yet complete. He couldn't compete with Mary Marvel's magical strength, but then he didn't need to overpower her, just get past her.

Faster than should have been possible for a man his size, he lunged; no hint of leg twitching or muscle tensing betrayed his intent prior to his sudden motion.

His body was mostly past the brunette when he felt a stinging smack of impact on his left forearm, followed by a grip strong enough to make even the bones in _his_ forearm creak. And then his body was hurtling backward, whipped into a brick wall with enough force to rattle his teeth and crack several bricks behind him.

"I _warned_ you," hissed the petite brunette as Bane erupted from the wall, charging directly at her and already feeling the burning of the Venom pulsing through his veins immediately after triggering the chemical's release.

She met his charge without hesitation, stepping forward just before his own punch would have squarely struck her head, driving her right fist against his sternum with a resounding _pop_ and ignoring the glancing blow to her own left temple. Before he could lift his left leg for a kick from his massive leg, she had landed another punch to his stomach, caving his abdominal muscles despite their newly-enhanced bulk and tone from the Venom. In the blink of an eye, she threw a fierce uppercut beneath his jaw, launching him up into the sky; no sooner had he left his feet than she was already flying above him, meeting his ascent with a downward kick to his skull that reversed his movement and sent him flying back down to the ground in a blur.

Before he could strike the concrete, she was back on the ground, a scarlet haze of motion as she moved faster the eye could register; she met him once more, putting her entire upper body into a punch that intercepted him in the millisecond before he hit the ground. The explosive clap of impact broke two nearby windows, and the now-unconscious body of Bane hurtled up and away from the alley, angled toward the nearby bay.

Mary shifted her weight, vacillating between landing another punch on him for good measure or just letting his current injuries be enough of a lesson for the assassin, only to have her attention seized by the familiar feeling of gentle fingertips brushing against her shoulder.

"Rae?" she said, turning to see the smiling face of her lover looking into her eyes. "Are they going to be okay?"

"They will," Raven replied softly. "Thanks to you."

"Well, you did the painful work. And the hard work." Mary smiled. "I just took out the trash."

"With quite lovely form, I must say," Raven said, stepping into Mary's embrace, warm and gentle despite the strength and power coursing through her body. "The strength of Hercules and the speed of Mercury make for a frightening combination," she said as she leaned her head forward and kissed her partner, allowing herself to relax and truly feel safe only here, only in these arms, where she felt nothing but love and devotion.

After their lips slowly, hesitantly parted, Mary smiled as she looked into Raven's dark violet eyes; the empath smiled just as proudly as she looked into the eyes of the woman to whom she had sworn her life and love.

"I do find it remarkable that nowhere in that mystical acronym of yours could they squeeze in a third A, for the love of Aphrodite," Raven whispered. "Because you possess that power just as surely as the other six."

"You're such a sweet talker," Mary Marvel said with a giggle. "You think we'll have time to take Harley and Ivy for a gelato when they wake up?"

Raven grinned before claiming another kiss from the brown-haired superhero, running her fingers lightly over Mary's ribs without tickling her... yet. "I think there is _always_ time for gelato, my love."

—O—

 **Author's Afterword:** So this little story grew out of a thought I had one day while getting out of the shower: if I were, like Raven, not just an empath sensitive to the emotions of around me but essentially a demonic powderkeg of evil and darkness which I constantly had to keep under control to prevent it from erupting in a cosmically catastrophic meltdown, just exactly who would I _want_ to be around? (Yes, I like to think about weird things while in the shower. Don't judge.) And the answer I kept coming back to was someone who would be inherently positive, good, loving and supportive. Someone who would bathe me in emotions that were positive and uplifting, who would be understanding and compassionate and supportive of my condition. Someone who would constantly make _me_ want to be a better person and inspire me at moments when I would most need that inspiration. Someone whose love and good nature would be like the soothing coolness of aloe on a burn when applied to the suffering in my soul. Someone in whose presence Raven could _finally_ lower her guard and just enjoy being around without constantly worrying about being overwhelmed by Trigon's evil.

Really, Raven's horribly tragic, even more so than most people get. It's not just pathos, or being emo or dramatic; she suffers all the time, even more so when she uses her powers to help others, and she has to keep it all bottled up inside, constantly. Other people broadcast their emotions relentlessly, and she often has to just wade through that emotional effluent with no choice in the matter. She possesses dimension-threatening power she inherited from Trigon, but she can't access it without risking loss of control. If she had a say in who she spent time around, wouldn't she want to be around someone who possessed honest positivity, a true love of others that could help raise her spirits at times when she needed it most? Someone who was truly sincere, who possessed compassion and a kind, caring heart, someone who could see beyond the fearsome front Raven puts up to drive others away and glimpse the terrified, broken soul so carefully locked away beneath all that self-control and discipline. Someone who could bear the knowledge of Raven's parentage yet still love her whole-heartedly for the person she forged herself into, someone who could see more than just the demonic stain of Trigon's evil and instead see a person deserving of love and companionship in her own right. Someone who was familiar with magic and the chaos that came with it, someone capable of defending not just himself (or herself) but also capable of defending Raven if necessary.

Someone... like Mary Marvel.

Yeah, it's a very weird pairing, but it makes a creepy kind of sense. At least to my way of thinking.

I hope you've enjoyed this little detour. It's certainly been fun, and it was a refreshing change of pace from my usual writing. As with most of my one-shots, I don't have any plans to revisit this one, but there's always the possibility of my doing so at some point in the future. Thanks for reading!

Jo


End file.
